BuggslifePhotography, Homebrew, Canoe, Travel, Nature…

Plucked from the shallows of Lake Tonchek in the shadow of Cerro Catedral, this stick proved a great companion and aide during the 3 day trek.

We arrived in Bariloche Saturday 1st April after a 20 hour bus ride. It is a nice town on one of the 7 major lakes in this area. Here is the view from our hostel balcony:
On the 2nd day we went out into the mountains a bit to have a look around and ended up trekking for 5 hours through a peaceful nature park…

We have done loads since this and will update when I can.

From Buenos Aires we travelled south to the coast. Mar Del Plata is your typical seaside resort style town. Its not the prettiest but was good fun and a nice break from the huge city of BA.

Just by the beach were a load of pensioners playing this disc game. Unfortunately members only…

It feels like these cows have followed me around the world, even though I have only seen them in two cities now…

Saying that, this lot were all different to those in Bratislava.

We spent Saturday night out and about in BA including a visit to a cemetry for families of high social status or people who are just plain rich. It is a walled of area with loads of different tombs along the streets. Most are old, grand and detailed but there are a few modern, shiny marble ones.

Cool fact: the tomb space costs more per square meter than in the nearby expensive area of town Palermo!

This is a photo taken from within one of the tombs:

Saturday night we went to see a superb Tango show in San Telmo. It was in a cool basement room with walls of just showing brick, completely different to the grand, fancy restaurant and hotel upstairs.

The band consisted of a huge double bass, an accordian and piano. The show was a mix of dancing, drumming and acting based around a basic story full of passion driven by lust, jealousy and typical Argentian front.

Simply put – this city is nuts!

It’s dusty, well noisy, really busy in traffic and people, vibrant and fantastic!

We spent the first 3 nights staying at a hostel in San Telmo, which is the old side of town and is associated with being the Tango quarter. The streets are all old looking, cool antique / junk shops, mini art galleries, local cafes, restobars…you get the gist. It’s a cool place to walk about, go for dinner (no earlier than 11pm though!) or check out some bars. I really like the area but our hostel is also a restobar downstairs and is unbelievably noisy. The rooms have shutter style high doors, really high ceilings and feature almost nothing more than two beds pushed together and a sink. There are areas where you can see directly down to the bar from the landing with only some netting between you and the people eating, drinking and talking (the locals’ version of drunken talking here is pretty much as loud as I can shout). It was fine for midweek as we went out until fairly late anyway but we were warned not to expect to sleep before 7 or 8 am during the weekend and last night (Thurs) was a good taster of that (it quietened down about 6ish).

So, we’ve moved on to a place in the more northern side of town, partly to give us the option of sleep in case we don’t stay out as late as we plan tonight and tomorrow but also to see a new side of the city. This city is huge with loads of areas with their own characters.

What have we been doing? Right, we spent hours going around La Boca Tues looking for ways of getting a ticket for Sunday’s match – Boca Vs River. No luck. Members only! By the way, I quote from the Lonely Planet about the area (barrio) of Boca “The worst neighbourhoods you, as a tourist, will encounter are La Boca (stick to those few tourist streets like glue, even in daylight)…”. We got lost twice and trekked most of the area and it wasn’t all that bad. Don’t ‘always’ believe the hype. More details will follow about Boca next week but I HAVE GOT A TICKET.

Like good tourists, we also checked out the main squares and stuff on the first day and joined the masses for the ritual of lunch. A real big deal here. We’ve had some good meals and some average. A Uruguayan restobar had good food – one was thin chicken wrapped around ricotta and other good fillings which I couldn’t work out and the other was close to a big fry-up style bap. Tasty. Plus the beer was good and cheap – 1.20 pounds for 1 litre.

That reminds me, Buenos Aires is very very cheap. That meal I mentioned was 5 pound for 2 main meals plus 2 litres of beer.

We also sampled a few big bifes (various types of steak). Most have tasted awesome, perfect texture but they also tend to have too many fatty bits for my liking. Especially one I picked up from an asado on the street by the river. There are loads along this big stretch, little stalls with a tent style roof, painted sign and huge BBQ with monster slabs of beef cooking on them. By the time I had dissected my way through that one I was covered in grease and sauce. The sauces, however, have been consistently quality. Chimichurri is my favourite so far – fresh herbs, garlic, chilli and oil. Works a treat.

Best wrap this up. The meals have been mostly really good, the bars great, the weather real good but real hot and humid even though around only 27C temperature.

The new hostel is more intimate and we can use the kitchen and the roof terrace which is sweet as! I’m gusselling a bottle of red wine right now, we splashed out on a more expensive bottle at 1.20 (pounds) and are going to cook for the first time and enjoy it on the roof. Then off out to check a new area of bars we’ve ben told about…

Yesterday me and Jordi had an afternoon out at the turtle sanctionary and then at the beach. The sanctuary’s pretty cool, as you might expect they rescue turtles and if possible release them in the future.

A couple of the turtles’ names caught my eye…

…firstly Bentley looking as aged as always…

…and also Jonah…

…some strong resemblances eh.

After the Molly entry I have now been informed by my cousin, Jordan, about the other pets that she can remember them having…..

“All the ones I remember having…a snake, an iguana, 4 turtles, 2 guineau pigs….ok….”
Jordan lists these off whilst making me feel ill because she’s bouncing up and down on a giant space hopper…

“4 dogs, yep, 4 dogs, ummmm, 4 cats, 2 hamsters” she is now making me dizzy by pacing round and round the room whilst thinking of any others…

“I had a slug for a pet for a day. And I had 2 millworms. It’s a worm that turns into a bug.”

“That’s it.”

Meet Molly; one of the local resident pets at my Uncle Chris’ house in Florida along with another – much more butch – Rotweiler called Rascal, a very vocal and chatty cat named Sooty, a more elusive moggy by the name of Magic plus numerous other non-residents including lizards, frogs, birds and some omni-eating squirrels.

Chilling out, maxing, relaxing all cool…unfortunately there’s been no B Ball as of yet but I’m hopeful about shooting some ball before the party on Saturday as the guy is supposed to have a marked out half court in his front yard.

Just been chillin’ in this garden.

You’ll have to bear with me on these cheesey lyrical references – but don’t worry, they should drift away from the Will Smith theme soon…!

I was well surprised by just how Hispanic Miami is! Every single sign has it’s Spanish translation, the majority of adverts are in Spanish and we heard far more Spanish voices than any other.

We spent 2 nights here and got a decent feel for the place. I really like it, there’s a lively and positive atmosphere although it did happen to be Spring Break which meant there were plenty of youths chilling by day and making the most of their time off by night.

Our hotel was great – a real old building (especially for the U.S.) on the south side of the river. The pool was refreshing after you’ve been sweating in the tasty heat and all day sun! Although if you ask any local to Florida the water is ‘freezing’. Bloody Brits!

We checked out Miami beach and South beach which were as expected, a good stretch of quality sand and gorgeous luke-warm sea. There’s a good range of shops, bars and cafes and we found 2 fantastic restaurants thanks to tip offs from the hotel woman. First night we had quality Mexican (a certain American friend of mine was proven absolutely right, at least based on this one restaurant, as he always went on about how much better Mexican food is in the States commpared to Europe) which was unbelievably cheap. Then on the Friday night we went to a crazy Cuban place. The eating part was HUGE and pretty much empty. I had some damn fine Pargo (Snapper) while Clare sampled a seafood platter. Afterwards we checked out what all the commotion was about in the adjacent bar. The bar was cramped and packed with a small stage with two dancers (I think kind of Flamenco) and the most skillful guitarist I’ve ever seen up close (sorry Geoff, he even surpassed your mighty skills). He was pretty old, didn’t use a pick, was playing an antic-looking guitar (I’d say was older than him) and honestly looked like he lived with the guitar permanently in his hands.

Anyway, enough. Miami was sweeeeeet!

* Every different nation, Spanish, Haitian, Indian, Jamaican
Black, White, Cuban, and Asian *

‘No alarms and no surprises’. Strange tune to be playing in the plane as we walked aboard. Had a quality curry last night, a couple of pints, some wine and a sambuca. Perfect prep for an early flight eh….

Next stop Miami.

It’s countdown time.
4 weeks tomorrow and we fly off.

If this blog site works out, I’ll be using it to keep some kind of diary for any of yous to read, if and when you like.

So keep a note of the link and keep checking back.

Take it easy, Dave

P.S. This is an old photo just to test it out…